We are in our early 40's, not married and have no kids. We have been on 17 previous cruises most of which were to the Caribbean; 6 RCCL, 4 NCL, 2 Princess, 4 Carnival and 1 Celebrity. Please keep in mind this is my opinion based on my experience.

We booked this cruise in March 2007 after receiving an email from an online travel agency listing a sale price for this sailing. After years of research this is not the Mediterranean cruise that I had chosen, but I booked it because it cost one third the price of my preferred cruise. I thought that if I waited until I could afford my dream cruise it would take a few more years, so I decided to take this opportunity for my first Mediterranean experience.

We left Minneapolis at 4:30PM on Halloween via Northwest airlines to Amsterdam scheduled to arrive at 6:30AM the next day. I was hoping to get some sleep on this flight, but that didn't happen. My itinerary listed a two hour wait until our KLM flight to Barcelona, but since the US decided to delay day light savings we had three hours between flights. That was okay, all the more time for our luggage to make the transfer. I had been reading horror stories about lost luggage on transatlantic flights all summer. Just in case I packed a lot of clothes in my carry on. We had plenty of time to go through customs and security, drink a cup of coffee at Starbucks and purchase a small pair of wooden shoes as a souvenir and Christmas ornament. We left Amsterdam on time at 8:30 and arrived in Barcelona at about 11AM. We were relieved to find all four pieces of checked luggage made it to Barcelona! Read more